State police or provincial police are a type of sub-national territorial police force, particularly in the United States of America and the Commonwealth of Australia. Some other countries have analogous police forces, such as the provincial police in some Canadian provinces. Particularly in the United States, the primary goals of most state police agencies are the safety of motorists on interstate highways, and the enforcement of traffic laws on those interstate highways, but can also involve state wide law enforcement and criminal investigation.

The Landespolizei (or LaPo) is a term used in the Federal Republic of Germany to denote the law enforcement services that perform law enforcement duties in the States of Germany. The German federal constitution leaves the majority of law enforcement responsibilities to the 16 states of the country.

In addition to the state police, major cities have their own police force called Metropolitan Police which is quite similar to other normal police forces except their different rank designations; e.g., DGP is called as Commissioner of Police (State) in a state with Metropolitan Police.

In Mexico, there are 31 states which they have their own police division, mainly focuses on the protection of their citizens, to keep the order in every state and combat the insecurity and drug trafficking.

In 2001, the Police Service of Northern Ireland was formed in Northern Ireland, succeeding the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Similarly, on 1 April 2013, Scotland's eight regional police forces amalgamated to create a Scottish national police service, Police Scotland. Both are local as well as national forces of their respective constituent countries - effectively 'state-level' within the UK. England and Wales, in contrast, typically organise policing on a city or county basis.

In the United States, state police are a police body unique to each U.S. state, having statewide authority to conduct law enforcement activities and criminal investigations. In general, they perform functions outside the jurisdiction of the county sheriff (Vermont being a notable exception), such as enforcing traffic laws on state highways and interstate expressways, overseeing the security of the state capitol complex, protecting the governor, training new officers for local police forces too small to operate an academy, providing technological and scientific services, supporting local police and helping to coordinate multi-jurisdictional task force activity in serious or complicated cases in those states that grant full police powers statewide. A general trend has been to bring all of these agencies under a state Department of Public Safety. Additionally, they may serve under different state departments such as the Highway Patrol under the state Department of Transportation and the Marine patrol under the state Department of Natural Resources. Twenty-two U.S. states use the term "State Police", eighteen use the term "Highway Patrol", and seven use the term "State Patrol".